BIOLOGY

CLIMATE CHANGE PROJECT

Project Description: The purpose of this project was for us students to gain an understanding and realization about this global issue (climate change) that is happening in our lives at this very moment. The project was to create something in a group that addresses our main questions of what are the effects, causes, solutions, of climate change and how we know it is happening. My group mostly focused on what the possible solutions of climate change were and the other questions we mostly addressed within our google slide. We wanted our project to bring awareness to the fact that our world is changing and we need to come together to fix this global issue.

Reflection:a.) What is climate change and how is it different from global warming?Climate change is characterized by substantial changes in weather, patterns and these occurrences of major weather events become very dramatic and frequent. Global warming is an effect of climate change, it is the gradual warming of the planet. Global warming is considered as a dramatic weather pattern caused by the greenhouse effect. We, humans, release carbon emissions that get trapped in the atmosphere and create this blanket surrounding the planet, that traps and bounces heat back onto Earth causing this warming.

b.) Why should we care about climate change, now, when it's been happening naturally since the Earth began? The Earth has indeed been going through shifts in its climate since it’s started, but carbon emissions have been rapidly increasing since the Industrial Revolution. The Fast Carbon Cycle and the Slow Carbon Cycle have been interrupted by carbon emission and humans. This increase of carbon put into the atmosphere is serving to the greenhouse effect where it’s creating a blanket and absorbing everything, so it’s trapped and can’t escape. This creates high temperatures causing permafrost to melt, which releases more carbon into the air and adds to this process of climate change. This is not good because everything on this planet does not have enough time to adapt to the environment like it usually would. After all, climate change is moving at such a fast rate. This is why we all need to start caring about this issue if we haven’t been already.

c.) How does your project demonstrate your understanding of climate change? ​ My group mainly based our project around the question of “what are the possible solutions for climate change?” When researching some of the effects on climate change we were very interested in looking into something on the topic of single-use plastics, and how that impacts climate change. When starting our project we learned that aluminum cans are very energy-intensive to produce and have a high carbon footprint, this is responsible for 11.09 tonnes of carbon emissions per ton of can. That is a massive amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere just because of the aluminum cans. When thinking on a bigger spectrum that is only one of the many things that create carbon and releases it into the atmosphere. This is one of the reasons why the Earth is heating up at such a fast rate, to the point where we need to act fast. We made aluminum can lanterns to display the substantial amount of waste being thrown into the trash daily, and to provide one possible solution. Upcycling things and making them into our can lanterns is an effective way to decrease the generation of greenhouse gases. Every ton of discarded textiles reused prevents 20 tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. This is why we need to upcycle the things we’ve already created to prevent CO2 emissions from rising more.

d.) What was your largest area of growth during this project? My largest area of growth during this project was my ability to balance my group's workload with time management. My group had about three weeks to get this project dialed down and finished. Thinking we had all this time to get this project done we didn’t use the time to our advantage. We ended up working well in the first week and about halfway through the second week, we ended up wasting our time by messing around with other groups and procrastinating. When we got close to the last bit of time we got stressed because we had so much to do with such little time. We had to get back on track and ignore all the distractions and obstacles we had in our way. We then had to split up tasks between each other to get everything done with the time we had left. It was so hard to crunch everything in with such a large amount of time. This taught me that you don’t have all the time you may think to finish something with a due date. When there’s a due date, there’s a due date. No exceptions. You have to do your work and have objectives and goals each day of what you want to accomplish. When you don’t reach those goals or objectives it can cause lots of problems that could slow you down. I learned that a lot during this project.

e.) What was your greatest strength during this project? My greatest strength during this project would have to be collaboration. There were many times where my partner and I had differing opinions and ideas of what we wanted to do for this project, and how we wanted to execute it. I had to work with my partner to come to a consensus when things like this happened. When we were able to come to a consensus on a problem, like what color the lanterns should be or what to have on the google slide we were able to work more efficiently. When I incorporated communication and dependability into the collaboration, my group was able to make things run smoother.

INFOGRAPHIC PROJECT

Project Description: The task was to create an infographic that can show the biological needs of an adolescent. The project was important to me, because it relates to my life and my peers life at the moment. I am an adolescent who is going through a huge change in my life. I am needing and doing things that can be shown through a lot of these infographics. Infographics are a good way to explain a topic in more icons, and diagrams than words . "One look is worth thousand words." - Frederick R. Barnard

Personal Reflection: a.) What was your biggest challenge during this project? My biggest challenge during this project was taking a topic related to adolescents, and making an infographic that incorporated more diagrams and icons, than pictures. I thought it was hard to make a story through these infographics without using a lot of writing. I also struggles with how I wanted to display my data onto this infographic. I think having a plan and all my research done helped me come to the final piece I was wanting though.

b.) What was your greatest success during the project? My greatest success was coming to a final product that I was actually happy about and wanted to take credit for. My first infographic wasn't my best, so I had doubts about the final infographic. Knowing the elements I needed to incorporate into this infographic helped me come to this final piece I wanted to display to the public. I think my infographic provided everything it needed to in order to follow along and make sense.

c.) If you were to this project again, and/or could make refinements to your work, what would you do differently? If I could redo this project again I would probably refine my information and icons. I would add more informations on how social media affects the brain, and what happens to the brain when you aren't on social media. I would also like to add graphs and tables that would relate to the information showcased on the infographic. I think I would add more icons, so it could be easy to follow and be more visually pleasing. I think my colors were a good fit though so I wouldn't change that. I would maybe format it a little different, so again it can be more visually pleasing.